Ah.. of Turks and Men

[Graywolf]

Well this Turkish campaign is absolutely insane right now. (thank you KK )

I love how they are positioned in a way to either fail miserably and be eaten up by Byzantium and Egypt or turn into an economic and military superpower. No space in between =).

I've adopted a strategy of totally cav/cav archer armies and against the Byzantines it's working wonders. After being attacked at Smyrna I decided to kick the Byzantines out of Anatolia altogether. Starting out with around 680 men on horses I swept through western Turkey like a horde. It was crazy. The Byzantines outnumbered me by a factor of 2 to 4 every battle and were annihilated almost every time. At first they were massive armies of spear men but a number of turns later they began churning out droves of Byzantine heavy infantry. On one suh battle I had 663 horses against 2241 soldiers... I lost about 10-20. The Byzantine army was obliterated .

So I took Niceae after a failed Byzantine counter attack which almost got me. Got kicked out by rebels and retook it a few turns later.

Now I have Venice and Sicily constantly trying to land on Smyrna (it has been besieged by one nation or another at least 7 times now...it's inhabitants must all be schizophrenic or paranoid by now)

The templars became a vassal of Egpyt after a war and With them holding a lot of land in the MidEast I decided to declare a Jihad on Antioch (mainly cuz I want to fight off wave after wave of crusaders) oddly enough, instead of breaking its alliance and declaring war on the Templars.. Egpyt broke its alliance with me! I'm having a lot of difficulty getting an alliance of Islamic nations..

HRE started out strong but was too ambitious for its own good and is now a vassal of the mighty Hungarians who control a big swath of Eastern Europe. Byzantium is rolling in gold but only controls Constantinople, Cyprus and present day Greece. Surprisingly the Moors are a very powerful force but the Iberian is still diverse with the Moors, Portuguese, and Spanish too stubborn to leave. I'm also happy to see Scotland being ambitious.

So that's how the world is right now; really this mod has done wonders for M2TW. Anyone else with similar or totally different experiences with or without the Turks?

[gr33kp1mp777]

i dont really play the Turks, but I would love to hear your cavalry/cavalry archer strategies!
i play byzantines and milan.....I could play turks if i learn to use em right

and yes, this mod is AMAZING

it hasnt made a whole new game, but has rather supergarged medieval 2 into what it would have been in its golden age!!!

factions realistically war with each other using varied archers and killer strategy on the battlefield and map!!!
they have smashed each other rather than focusing on me every single game, the victor is random!!!

Milan doesnt beat all the AI, sometimes its russia, hungary, byzantium, egypt, even scotland has a chance at glory in this mod....I LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!!!11

[Mike13531]

ya, your right, it's always Milan.. byz.. or hre on mine. pretty challenging , xD, if you guys are intereseted i'm posting my screenshots on screenshot thread

[Graywolf]

Cool. I'll post some screenies when I find out which folder they are in. I quickly found out as Turks that if you focus on infantry as if you were a Western Euro faction you are setting yourself up to fail miserably. Early in the game I use a lot of peasant archers and spear militia. The militia is good for taking the early settlements and tying down the enemy while you shoot. Also Turkish HA and Turkomans have the same missile attack its only melee and armor and maybe morale that differentiates them. Basically when fightng a large army (which the Byzantines can make a lot of) this is what I do: If I have infantry I will use them in the center to buy time. If not its not too much of a problem. (Alan light cav is good for this strat)

With a load of HA you can split them into two flanks and position them on the sides of the enemy. Just make sure they dont get stuck in any melee. I use my general as a battering ram against the enemy infantry and it works well. Also since the AI tends to send its inf at your gen instead of the HA's you can use him as bait. If the enemy has no general but only a captain then charge at him from the side to kill him. The enemy army suffers a big morale loss. Really your just surrounding the enemy and shooting them while not letting them catch up to you. If they have HA's use your Alan Light cav against them. Once your out of missiles (which happens quickly with Horse Archers) gather up all your mounted soliders into either one or two large groups and make a massive charge at the enemy's weakest part. The aim of this isnt so much to kill people with the charge as it is to casue the enemy army to route. On one battle, my biggest victory where I had 663 and the Byzantines had 2241, I got 945 prisoners because the enemy all started routing. This is how the Turks come to dominate the field with inferior manpower but superior tactics/mobility.

Note: the better inf they have the less effective this tactic becomes using Turk HA's and Turkomans. Example: once I faced 1 group of Byzatine HI..only 120 men with my horde of 600+ horses. After everyone used up their arrows there were still a handfull left cuz their armor is so thick.


Maybe too long but hope this helps!

Edit: out of how awesome WhiteWoolf's Byz skins are I started a Byz campaign.. I never realized how loaded they were. There is so much money! Heh I'm here in a Turk campaign thinking no fair. You really have to try alot harder to survive as the Turks. Egypt.. Byzantines.. Venice.. Russia.. Mongols.. Timurids.. Ekh. Possibilities to fail everwhere you go with that faction. Though once you get teh Janissaries all of a sudden its all worth it

[gr33kp1mp777]

thx very much!!!
but after manymanymany futile attempts at succeeding, i have discovered that my infantry will get eaten, and heavy cavalry WILL kill my Horse archers.......i always get angry when i use any sort of archers, because they just soften up the enemy a little bit, without EVER DEALING ANY SORT OF BLOW...........then they lose their ammo and get killed by heavy cavalry/heavy infantry